THERE was one peculiarity in all the books on Grandfather Iden's
shelves, they were all very finely bound in the best style of hand-art,
and they all bore somewhere or other a little design of an ancient Roman
lamp.
Hand-art is a term I have invented for the workmanship of good taste--it
is not the sculptor's art, nor the painter's--not the art of the mind,
but the art of the hand. Some furniture and cabinet work, for instance,
some pottery, book-binding like this, are the products of hand-art.
"Do you see the Lamp?" asked the old man, when Amaryllis had stared
sufficiently at the backs of the books.
"Yes, I can see the Lamp."
"House of Flamma," said old Iden.
"House of Flamma," repeated Amaryllis, hastily, eager to show that she
understood all about it. She feared lest he should enter into the
history of the House of Flamma and of his connection with it; she had
heard it all over and over again; her mother was a Flamma; she had
herself some of the restless Flamma blood in her. When anything annoyed
her or made her indignant her foot used to tap the floor, and her neck
flush rosy, and her face grow dusky like the night. Then, striving to
control herself, she would say to herself, "I _will_ not be a Flamma."
Except her dear mother and one other, Amaryllis detested and despised
the whole tribe of the Flammas, the nervous, excitable, passionate,
fidgetty, tipsy, idle, good-for-nothing lot; she hated them all, the
very name and mention of them; she sided with her father as an Iden
against her mother's family, the Flammas. True they were almost all
flecked with talent like white foam on a black horse, a spot or two of
genius, and the rest black guilt or folly. She hated them; she would not
be a Flamma.
How should she at sixteen understand the wear and tear of life, the
pressure of circumstances, the heavy weight of difficulties--there was
something to be said even for the miserable fidgetty Flammas, but
naturally sixteen judged by appearances. Shut up in narrow grooves and
working day after day, year after year, in a contracted way, by degrees
their constitutional nervousness became the chief characteristic of
their existence. It was Intellect overcome--over-burdened--with two
generations of petty cares; Genius dulled and damped till it went to the
quart pot.
Sixteen could scarcely understand this. Amaryllis detested the very
name; she would not be a Flamma.
But she was a Flamma for all that; a Flamma in fire of spirit, in
strength of indignation, in natural capacity; she drew, for instance,
with the greatest ease in pencil or pen-and-ink, drew to the life; she
could write a letter in sketches.
Her indignation sometimes at the wrongfulness of certain things seemed
to fill her with a consuming fire. Her partizanship for her father made
her sometimes inwardly rage for the lightning, that she might utterly
erase the opposer. Her contempt of sycophancy, and bold independence led
her constantly into trouble.
Flamma means a flame.
Yet she was gentleness itself too; see her at the bookshelves patiently
endeavouring to please the tiresome old man.
"Open that drawer," said he, as she came to it.
Amaryllis did so, and said that the coins and medals in it were very
interesting, as they really were. The smoke caught her in the throat,
and seemed to stop the air as she breathed from reaching her chest. So
much accustomed to the open air, she felt stifled.
Then he asked her to read to him aloud, that he might hear how she
enunciated her words. The book he gave her was an early copy of Addison,
the page a pale yellow, the type old-fount, the edges rough, but where
in a trim modern volume will you find language like his and ideas set
forth with such transparent lucidity? How easy to write like that!--so
simple, merely a letter to an intimate friend; but try!
Trim modern volumes are so very hard to read, especially those that come
to us from New York, thick volumes of several hundred pages, printed on
the thinnest paper in hard, unpleasant type. You cannot read them; you
_work_ through them.
The French have retained a little of the old style of book in their
paper bound franc novels, the rough paper, thick black type, rough edges
are pleasant to touch and look at--they feel as if they were done by
hand, not turned out hurriedly smooth and trim by machinery.
Docile to the last degree with him, Amaryllis tried her utmost to read
well, and she succeeded, so far as the choking smoke would let her. By
grunting between his continuous fits of coughing the old man signified
his approval.
Amaryllis would have been respectful to any of the aged, but she had a
motive here; she wanted to please him for her father's sake. For many
years there had been an increasing estrangement between the younger and
the elder Iden; an estrangement which no one could have explained, for
it could hardly be due to money matters if Grandfather Iden was really
so rich. The son was his father's tenant--the farm belonged to
Grandfather Iden--and perhaps the rent was not paid regularly. Still
that could not have much mattered--a mere trifle to a man of old Iden's
wealth. There was something behind, no one knew what; possibly they
scarcely knew themselves, for it is a fact that people frequently fall
into a quarrel without remembering the beginning.
Amaryllis was very anxious to please the old man for her father's sake;
her dear father, whom she loved so much. Tradesmen were for ever
worrying him for petty sums of money; it made her furious with
indignation to see and hear it.
So she read her very best, and swallowed the choking smoke patiently.
Among the yellow pages, pressed flat, and still as fresh as if gathered
yesterday, Amaryllis found bright petals and coloured autumn leaves. For
it was one of the old man's ways to carry home such of these that
pleased him and to place them in his books. This he had done for half a
century, and many of the flower petals and leaves in the grey old works
of bygone authors had been there a generation. It is wonderful how long
they will endure left undisturbed and pressed in this way; the paper
they used in old books seems to have been softer, without the hard
surface of our present paper, more like blotting paper, and so keeps
them better. Before the repulsion between father and son became so
marked, Amaryllis had often been with her grandfather in the garden and
round the meadows at Coombe Oaks, and seen him gather the yellow tulips,
the broad-petalled roses, and in autumn the bright scarlet bramble
leaves. The brown leaves of the Spanish chestnut, too, pleased him;
anything with richness of colour. The old and grey, and withered man
gathered the brightest of petals for his old and grey, and forgotten
books.
Now the sight of these leaves and petals between the yellow pages
softened her heart towards him; he was a tyrant, but he was very, very
old, they were like flowers on a living tomb.
In a little while Grandfather Iden got up, and going to a drawer in one
of the bookcases, took from it some scraps of memoranda; he thrust these
between her face and the book, and told her to read them instead.
"These are your writing."
"Go on," said the old man, smiling, grunting, and coughing, all at once.
"In 1840," read Amaryllis, "there were only two houses in Black Jack
Street." "Only _two_ houses!" she interposed, artfully.
"Two," said the grandfather.
"One in 1802," went on Amaryllis, "while in 1775 the site was covered
with furze." "How it has changed!" she said. He nodded, and coughed, and
smiled; his great grey hat rocked on his head and seemed about to
extinguish him.
"There's a note at the bottom in pencil, grandpa. It says, 'A hundred
voters in this street, 1884.'"
"Ah!" said the old man, an ah! so deep it fetched his very heart up in
coughing. When he finished, Amaryllis read on--
"In 1802 there were only ten voters in the town."
"Ah!" His excitement caused such violent coughing Amaryllis became
alarmed, but it did him no harm. The more he coughed and choked the
livelier he seemed. The thought of politics roused him like a
trumpet--it went straight to his ancient heart.
"Read that again," he said. "How many voters now?"
"A hundred voters in this street, 1884."
"We've got them all"--coughing--"all in my lord's houses, everyone; vote
Conservative, one and all. What is it?" as some one knocked. Dinner was
ready, to Amaryllis's relief.
"Perhaps you would like to dine with me?" asked the grandfather,
shuffling up his papers. "There--there," as she hesitated, "you would
like to dine with young people, of course--of course."
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